Materials
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.51 billion years. It is possible that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to daughter elements to determine the age of the record.
The records also had the sentence "To the makers of music — all worlds, all times" handwritten on them. Since this was not in the original disc specification, it almost caused their rejection.
Read more about this topic: Voyager Golden Record
Famous quotes containing the word materials:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
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